Royal Street

by Suzanne Johnson

  Enough. I had to do something, but I couldn’t go home without blustering my way past jumpy soldiers and breaking the mandatory evacuation order. Gerry’s side of our transport remained inoperable for some reason. No phone calls to the 504 area code would go through. My options were limited.

  On Thursday, almost two weeks after the storm, I finally broke down and visited my father—Gran had told me it was his off-day. I didn’t feel too badly about waiting so long. The roads worked in both directions, and he hadn’t come to see me, either.

  I pulled up to his neat redbrick ranch house, about a ten-minute drive from Gran’s. The lawn was green and the flower beds well-tended. A black Ford pickup sat in the driveway. Like every place here, it seemed eerily quiet. My life was filled with sirens and horns and streetcars and crowds, with a constant backdrop of music.

  The front door opened before I cleared the small brick porch, and Dad stepped back to let me in. “Wondered when you were gonna come by here,” he said, smiling and pulling me into a quick hug. He was always smaller than I remembered. In my mind, Peter Jaco was a tall bear of a man, I guess because in most of my memories, I was a kid. This Peter Jaco was just a middle-aged man in a navy polo shirt and khakis, thinning on top and thickening in the middle.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” I said, following him into the bright kitchen with its floral wallpaper and white curtains. “I’ve been trying to follow what’s going on at home, and, well …”

  “Yeah, it’s a shame. Your house all right?”

  He’d never come to see it, but at least he asked. “I don’t know. I heard the spots along the river didn’t flood so maybe it’s okay. I’m hoping they’ll start letting us go home next week when it drains a little more.”

  Dad held up a Diet Dr Pepper. “You still drink these?”

  I smiled and took it. “Where’s Martha this morning?” Dad had remarried when I was ten, but never had more children. Probably just as well.

  “Always gets her hair done on Thursdays,” he said. “She’ll be sorry she missed you. You talk to Gerry since the storm?”

  I followed him into the neat den and took a seat on the end of the plush sofa nearest his favorite armchair. “I haven’t really gotten to talk to him, but I know he’s okay. His house was about eight blocks from one of the worst levee breaches.”

  At first, I’d used hydromancy to check on Gerry every night but finally decided he was fine. He’d always been reading, writing at his desk, pacing. Once or twice I’d seen him talking to someone outside my field of vision—a trapped neighbor, probably, or one of the rescuers going around in boats.

  Dad didn’t ask how I knew Gerry was okay. The whole idea of magic made him antsy so neither of us mentioned it anymore. “Gerry will be fine,” he said. “He always lands on his feet.”

  I was about to ask what he meant when Fats Domino started belting out “Walking to New Orleans” from deep inside my purse.

  Dad chuckled. “Your bag is singing.”

  I smiled and dug in the oversize satchel. “I have a five-oh-four area code and no one’s been able to call since the storm,” I said, pulling out a chocolate bar, some keys, and a notebook, but no phone. “Maybe this means the cell towers are working again.”

  By the time I’d excavated it from the tangle of stuff that purses always seem to collect, the caller had hung up. I checked the call log and choked on my soda. Congress of Elders. No phone number, but the message icon blinked.

  “Uh, I need to check this.”

  “You go on,” Dad said, heading for the kitchen. “I’m gonna get me some coffee.”

  My hand shook as I punched in my PIN. Pixie retrieval did not put one on the Elders’ radar. I’d never seen an Elder, much less talked to one. The highest I’d ever rated on the wizarding scale of importance was a certificate showing I’d passed my sentinel exam four years ago and the nifty badge that came with it.

  A deep, rich voice boomed out a short message: Gerald St. Simon is missing. Return to New Orleans immediately.

  CHAPTER 6

  Alarm signals went off in my head. I automatically reached in my pocket and grabbed my mojo bag, willing my tightening muscles to relax as I inhaled the sweet, minty scents of acacia and hyssop. Gerry couldn’t be missing. I’d been keeping tabs on him until a couple of days ago. But Katrina had already taught me the world could change in much less time than that.

  I stuck the phone in my pocket and returned to the kitchen. “Dad, I’m sorry, but something’s going on in New Orleans. I need to go.”

  He set down the coffee cup and frowned at me. “Don’t go down there and let those people drag you into nothin’ dangerous.”

  I didn’t have to ask who those people were. Gerry. Elders. Those people. People like me.

  Still, he’d at least expressed concern, so I poured the rest of my soda down the sink and surprised both of us by hugging him. It took a couple of heartbeats, but his arms circled me and held me tight before we both pulled away.

  “You look just like your mama, you know that?”

  We smiled at each other, and suddenly I wished I could stay here and talk to him. Really talk. Maybe if we could sit down, just the two of us, he could tell me why he made the decisions he did and I could be at peace with it.

  But first I had to talk to those people.

  I drove back to Gran’s and went straight to the garage, grabbing a bottle of purified water and my backpack along the way.

  Hydromancy should be done at night to pull on the aura of the moon, but a dark garage was the best I could do on a sunny Saturday. I grabbed a folding TV tray to use as a table and shut the door behind me, setting up my work space next to an ancient Maytag deep freeze filled with homegrown tomatoes, peppers, and corn. While the incense burned, I lit an unscented candle and worked on relaxing, settling my thoughts, and focusing on Gerry. Finally, I stirred the incense ash into the water and turned off the lights. Kneeling in front of the tray, I placed one hand on the book and the other in the water, projecting a surge of magic into the bowl.

  The water clouded for a few seconds, swirled, then cleared. Nothing. I tried twice more. Still nothing.

  I blew a frustrated breath between my clenched teeth and tried again, this time focusing on Gerry’s upstairs study instead of Gerry himself. Within a few seconds an image appeared, hazier than my moonlight images but still recognizable. Sebastian curled like a bristly brown ball on Gerry’s favorite armchair. No sign of Gerry.

  One by one, I looked in the other upstairs rooms, even the bathroom. Finally, I tried the first floor. The floodwater should have receded enough for him to go downstairs. A chaotic assortment of furniture and inky sludge showed up in the living room, but no wizard. Outside, his vintage BMW remained in his driveway, upside down and sideways, covered in mud. Still no Gerry.

  Blowing out the candle, I sat in the dark a minute, feeling the familiar achy aftermath of using magic. Where was he? How long had he been missing—an hour? A day? Two days? It couldn’t be longer.

  I pulled myself to my feet and returned to the kitchen. The sun pushing through the open curtains blinded me after the darkness of the garage, and I squinted against it. Gran puttered around outside, the water faucet squeaking as she turned it on, followed by the hiss of the garden hose.

  I dug the phone out of my pocket and scrolled through the tiny screen’s menu. Gerry once told me the Elders could contact any wizard at will, but I’d always envisioned something more along the lines of a glowing crystal ball or a bolt of lightning, not a silly little camera phone. Gerry kept up with activity from the Beyond through a large wall-mounted screen in his study, but I wasn’t sure how he communicated away from home. By phone, maybe.

  I scrolled to Congress of Elders in the missed-call log, punched the send button even though no number was listed, and heard the static pause of a call going through.

  The voice on the other end sounded like the one on the message. Deep, melodious, British accent. “Yes, Drusilla Jaco? Are your in
structions unclear?”

  I flinched. First impressions counted, so I should try to impress this guy with my rapier wit and keen intelligence. My mind blanked, and a prong of pain started behind my right eye. The Elders would think I was a moron.

  “May I ask to whom I’m speaking?” Maybe they’d think I was polite, if not particularly bright. I sat hard on a kitchen chair.

  “I am the Speaker of the Congress of Elders. And you”—he paused for effect—“must return to New Orleans as soon as possible.” Like many outsiders, the Speaker mispronounced the city New Or-leens, but correcting him seemed like a bad idea.

  “What happened to Gerry?”

  The Speaker hesitated. “We have been unable to locate the sentinel for the past twenty-four hours.”

  I frowned. Travel in Lakeview still required a boat, but I had seen Gerry talking to someone outside his window. “Maybe he rode out with one of the rescuers. He might even have gone to my house—I don’t think it flooded.” He might have left Sebastian, knowing the cat would be okay alone for a few days.

  “He is not in New Orleans, I can assure you,” the Speaker said, his tone implying that he did, indeed, consider me a moron.

  Gerry might be a closet anarchist, but he took his sentinel duties seriously. “He wouldn’t have left New Orleans unprotected.” I avoided the other options—that he’d left New Orleans involuntarily, or something bad had happened to him.

  The Speaker’s voice softened. “We cannot detect his unique energy field, which is how we locate wizards with whom we wish to communicate. We should be able to find him anywhere in the world. Of course, we are investigating, but in the meantime we need you to go back. We’re shorthanded, and although you aren’t Red Congress, you know the city and have been the deputy sentinel several years.”

  I took a deep breath. “This doesn’t make any sense. I know Gerry was fine two days ago.”

  “How do you know that? We were in contact with him ourselves until yesterday, and he said the two of you hadn’t spoken.”

  I might as well fess up. Surely the Elders wouldn’t arrest me for a tiny bit of illegal magic if they were shorthanded. “When I couldn’t reach him after the flooding started and the transport we’d set up didn’t work, I used hydromancy to make sure he was okay.”

  “I see.” Two short words, dripping with disapproval. “Well then, I assume as soon as you received my message you tried to scry him again.” He didn’t wait for me to answer before adding, “Did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

  Huh. Did that mean the Elders couldn’t do hydromancy, or that they were too law-abiding to try it? I took a deep breath. The alligators were halfway up to my ass. Might as well let ’em keep climbing.

  “He isn’t anywhere in his house,” I said. “His car is in the drive, but it’s totaled. I’ve been keeping an eye on him since the storm hit, though, and he’s been fine. Disappearing at this point doesn’t make sense.”

  “We’ll keep investigating,” the Speaker said. “In the meantime, you need to go back. Today if you can, but certainly by tomorrow. The storm weakened the temporal fabric between the mundane world and the Beyond, and breaches are showing up all along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Because of its age and supernatural history, New Orleans is particularly vulnerable.”

  No kidding. You couldn’t walk down the street without tripping over a ghost story, and most were true.

  The speaker continued. “Of course, the Elders could have overestimated your abilities. If you wish to stay where you are, I’m sure our New Mexico sentinel would be willing to step in temporarily.”

  What a jerk. The Elders would not give my job to the asshat monkey, even if I had to walk back to New Orleans.

  “I can handle things just fine, sir. I need to make a few preparations and will head back early tomorrow.” Preparations like a nice, long grounding ritual to help me emotionally survive a city filled with grief and anger and death. And maybe a bag of Cheetos.

  “Fine,” the Speaker said. “It will take a while for us to repair the damage between the Now and the Beyond. It’s complex magic, and there are not many wizards able to do such spellwork. In the meantime, I don’t have to tell you how important it is that we monitor anyone from the Beyond who tries to come into New Orleans.”

  I tried to wrap my brain around the situation, pushing thoughts of Gerry aside for the moment. He’d always told me to keep my emotions in a compartment that could be shut off till later, when there was time to deal with them. I did it now, focusing on the immediate problem and shutting away the part of me that wanted to have a meltdown.

  “Any ideas on how I can best get into the city?” I asked. “The mandatory evacuation is still in effect and my transport to Gerry’s house doesn’t work.” It would take at least eight hours to drive down, and I didn’t know what kind of roadblocks I’d run into.

  “You’re obviously a resourceful wizard,” he said. “Just get there. And we’ll look past the hydromancy this time, given the circumstances. But don’t do it again.”

  I opened my mouth to answer but the void on the phone told me that, for the Speaker at least, the conversation was over. I got a whiff of why Gerry usually referred to the Elders as “arrogant old gits.”

  I leaned back in my chair, flexing my shoulders to stretch out the kinks and trying to think where Gerry might be. If he wasn’t showing up on the Elders’ version of magical radar, it could mean he’d discovered a way to move around undetected, although I wasn’t sure why he’d want to. Gerry was no dumb bunny. Did they think he was dead?

  My heart did a flip-flop. I wouldn’t even go there.

  I walked to the window and saw Gran on her knees in front of the flower bed, pruning her hybrid roses for one last bloom before autumn. She was tall and thin, her every movement deliberate and controlled. She didn’t laugh often. I had a few fading images of her and my mom giggling as they baked cookies in this kitchen and pretended to let me help, but most of my memories came afterward, when Dad sent me to live here. She said and did the right things, but I couldn’t control my empathic skills so I knew she missed my mom every time she looked at me. And I knew my magic scared her, which I never understood because she’d had her own magic when she was young. Within a year, they’d foisted me off on Gerry.

  Gran stood up and looked back at the house. I motioned her inside, and at the sight of my face, she laid down her shears and headed toward the back door, pulling off her heavy gardening gloves.

  “It’s Gerry,” I said as she opened the door, eyebrows raised. “He’s missing.”

  Gran frowned and steered me toward the worn wooden table in the center of the kitchen. “How do you know?” She pulled two green vintage Fiesta mugs from the old Hoosier cabinet and rummaged in a drawer for tea infusers.

  I told her about my close encounter of the Elder kind, and she trained beady, suspicious eyes on me.

  “You’re being awfully calm about this, Drusilla Jane.” Gran never called me DJ. I think some small part of her still hoped I’d abandon my magical ways and turn into a normal, baby-producing granddaughter. Fat chance.

  “I’m calm because I don’t believe anything is really wrong. It’s some kind of misunderstanding. I need to get back down there as early as possible tomorrow and see if I can sort it out.”

  I caught myself tearing a paper napkin into a pile of tiny shreds. I wadded it up and stuck the evidence in my pocket while Gran’s back was turned. So much for calm.

  She handed me a cup of herbal tea, one of her special blends that wafted traces of ginger and bergamot. Her instinct for herbs was all the magic she’d retained after giving it up to marry my granddad.

  “Did you ever wonder why your grandfather and I sent you to live with Gerry?” she asked. “I mean, why Gerry in particular?”

  “Sure. Gerry always said it was because he knew how to work around empaths,” I said. “You never seemed to really like him, though, and I always wondered why.” I was surprised she’d even broached the subject
.

  Gran paused as if trying to decide whether or not to acknowledge her animosity. “Gerry is a good enough man, I guess. Your grandfather and I just hoped you’d do like me and your mama, that you’d give up on the magic and be normal. The Elders chose Gerry for you to live with.”

  I didn’t want to go down the normal-versus-magic road. “Why Gerry?”

  She looked out the window and took a slow sip of tea. “You developed your magic real young, not just your ritual magic. You had that empathy thing too, and some physical magic—I didn’t know how to deal with it all.”

  I frowned at her. “I don’t really have much physical magic. What made you think I did?”

  She looked at her teacup a moment, then picked it up and took it to the sink. “You could move things around a little—just enough so we were afraid you’d hurt yourself, or us. Those people, the Elders, said you’d do better with somebody like Gerry, who knew more about it.”

  Those people again. As the hot tea warmed my throat and settled my nerves, I found myself wishing, for the second time today, that I could stay a little longer and hash things out, maybe put to rest some of the questions and hurt I’d avoided dealing with all these years.

  It would have to wait. For the past eighteen years, Gerry had been the one who was there for me. Now it was my turn.

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2005 “New Orleans is now occupied by two armies: the military troops who are restoring order, and the TV crews bent on broadcasting the destruction and rebirth of an American city.”

  —THE TIMES–PICAYUNE

  CHAPTER 7

  The return to New Orleans took me on a roundabout path, literally over the river and through the woods, except the woods were full of buffed-up guys with short hair and in uniforms. The interstate was heavily policed, and all the bridges across Lake Pontchartrain were either destroyed or closed to nonmilitary traffic. I had to loop around and approach the city from the west along the narrow two-lane highway that skirts the Mississippi River.